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Kathy, (aka "Bessie"), and I began our beekeeping experience in the fall of 2008, when we began a year-long course in beekeeping through the Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We got our first package of bees in April of 2009. At the suggestion of our daughter, Jessica, we are logging our beekeeping experience. Hope you find it interesting. It has been interesting, rewarding and entertaining for us as well.

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Honey time has arrived here early, at least from the perspective our somewhat limited experience. This will be our third year of honey harvest, and the very earliest we have extracted honey. The past two years, it has been the end of August/beginning of September when we harvested. I could have taken honey several weeks ago, actually. Most was capped and ready to go.

Kathy and I pulled two medium supers off the first hive this morning. It amounts to roughly 75 pounds, counting the weight of the frames. I had the bee escape on and it worked fairly well. We still had to brush off some bees but brushing gently didn't seem to bother them much. We put the bee escape on hive #2. We'll pull probably 8 frames off that hive. Since they are likely still queenless, their numbers have declined and they haven't been able to produce as much.
Here are a few of the 1 frames we took this morning. Though these two have a couple blemishes, most frames were simply gorgeous, complet…

It's been too damn hot to even think of opening the hives until the heat broke Sunday. I've been anxious to open up the hives and see what is going on, especially after reading this post from Jim, in Stillwater, Minnesota, from his blog What Should I Be Doing With My Bees This Month?
I wanted to make sure my bees weren't showing the same type of crud he has been experiencing. Kathy has been concerned about hive #2, since they just weren't showing the type of activity (i.e. bearding in masses) we were seeing at the other hive. I also wanted to see what kind of progress they're making with the honey, and additionally take a frame of young larva to put again into the nuc to try to get a queen going there.

That was the plan, anyway. First, the local weatherman (do they collect their paychecks without guilt or remorse???) blew it again. According to his forecast, it was supposed to be very mild, with highs in the afternoon only in the low 80's. Of course, it…